My Mint OS crashed after I added MATE panels to each side of my desktop. After the third additional panel, I experimented (played around) with adding a fourth additional panel to see if it would line up below my default panel, which was at the top. Instead it completely covered my first and default panel. So, then I had four blank panels showing on each side of my desktop. Right clicking would not work on any of them in order to get rid of them. No operations were working. (Having a MATE warning about the danger of too many panels would have been appreciated!... of course, maybe I should not have pushed the system so much.)

Have rebooted... a few times. Only one blank panel appears on top covering my default panel with icons. Right clicking does not work. No terminal access. Keystroke commands do not work. Nothing will work, except my mouse moves around. None of my desktop icons appear.

Mint Recovery Mode brings up the same actions (even after repairing packages). However, Recovery Mode brings up a command terminal.

Please tell me:What terminal command(s) can I use to uninstall my panel(s) and reinstall, thereby circumventing a complete Mint reinstall?

Any help appreciated. Thanks so much.jaderiver

Last edited by jaderiver on Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

mate panel settings are in a hidden directory:/home/*yourusername*/.mateconf/apps/panel/

If you delete the "panels" folder, the next time you log in, mint will load the default panel.

You can do this in the terminal, but it may be easier to boot a liveCD, and delete it via the GUI file manager.The files are hidden, so when you open the file manager, press "ctrl+h" to show hidden files.

If you want to use the terminal, at the login screen press "ctrl+alt+F1"login with your username and passworddelete the folder with this command"rm -rf .mateconf/apps/panel" and press enternow press "ctrl+alt+F7" to return to the login windowlogin and everything should be back to normal

note: please be careful with this command, the "rm -rf" will delete stuff without confirming or asking questions, It just does it. So make sure you type it in right.

My apologies for taking awhile to thank you very much for suggesting a detailed solution to my panel and crashed desktop issue. Unfortunately, I did not have just a little more patience to wait for somebody to respond and began trying all sorts of things to uncrash my system. So, first of all, curiosity killed the cat; then, "a dose of impatience..."... whatever.

I have been a Mint Newbie just long enough to think I can make intelligent guesses as to what terminal commands to try when in doubt. So, first I removed and reinstalled mate-panel. Still no desktop and/or controls. So, then I did the same for mate-desktop. Ultimately, I did perform a complete reinstall of Mint.

On the bright side , just the day before the detrimental experimentation with mate-panels, my home folder and all its content was saved onto a flash drive via Backup Tool. Also, this latest need to reinstall Mint, and dealing with a few hitches, resulted in greater in-depth understanding of the installation process.